The 64-Square Looking Glass: Great Games of Chess in World Literature

by Burt Hochberg

Includes stories, poems, and essays by Lewis Carroll, Anne Bronte, Vladimir Nabakov, Jorge Luis Borges, Agatha Christie, Kurt Vonnegut, and others in which chess is the centerpiece

Genres: Chess

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 1993

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with all anthologies, some parts of this are better than others. I was taken by a surprisingly deft description of a chess game by Ian Fleming, and reminded of how good Nabokov and Tevis are. But I also have to say that most of the selections show their authors struggling to make strong imaginative use of a game as cerebral and introspective as chess. They tend either to shift fantasy/allegory, with the pieces standing in for people, or to simply use the game as backstory for characters.